Not all movies stand the test of time. We’ve probably all experienced shock at rewatching a childhood favorite only to discover it’s not as good as we thought it was. I remembered The Transformers: The Movie (1986) as being sophisticated because Optimus Prime dies in it and tried to get my wife to watch it one time, only to be chagrined to find out it’s basically just one long toy commercial. Continue reading
Month: May 2018
The Incredibles
I didn’t like The Incredibles (2004) the first time I saw it. Now that a sequel is coming out, I thought I’d give the original movie another chance. Let’s see how that goes.
The Incredibles seems to be an homage to the Fantastic Four (1961-present), a comic in which someone with super strength, someone who can stretch, someone who can turn invisible and make force fields, and someone who can light themselves on fire and fly form a kind of found family. In The Incredibles, we have someone with super strength, someone who can stretch, someone who can turn invisible and make force fields, and someone who can run fast forming an actual family. Continue reading
Catching up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Since I’ve last posted about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’ve seen the latest four movies. They just keep pumping them out as fast as they can, don’t they? Spiderman: Homecoming (2017) was an average superhero movie targeted towards teenagers, but I liked several things about it: it gave us a sympathetic villain, they didn’t bother giving us Spiderman’s origin story (we’ve had enough of those), the bully wasn’t stereotypical, and the high school students appeared to be – well – high-school-aged (in so many Hollywood movies, they have adults play fifteen-year-olds and it just doesn’t work). It’s also funny in parts. Continue reading
Women of Futures Past
Women of Futures Past starts with an introduction by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in which she gives us a fascinating behind the scenes look into the science fiction publishing industry. (She also introduces each story.) She tells us that many people assume women writing SciFi is a recent phenomenon even though women have been writing SciFi from the beginning. The reason people think women weren’t part of science fiction in earlier decades is because female writers are often left out of Best Of anthologies which effectively erases them from history. She says this is partly due to literary SciFi being favored over the type of SciFi women often write such as space opera. This anthology was created to shine a light on past and present female science fiction writers who haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. Continue reading
Mania Delight 